Developed in collaboration with the Organization of Ibero-American States and the educational content producer FORO 21, the program encourages children from the region to play an active role in making their communities safer.

Last year’s Connected by Safety taught children between the ages of 8 and 10 from Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia and Peru how to act in emergency situations and about the roles of the different public-safety agencies. Now, the program is expanding its scope to include children from Brazil and Mexico, thus offering active citizen and early alert workshops in seven Latin American countries.

“This project, which began seven years ago in Argentina, teaches children through games that bring them closer to their heroes and letting them know they can count on these public safety officers in difficult times,” said Diego Manusovich, director of FORO 21. “This strategy has been key for the growth of this program and has led it to win several awards, including three Eikon Awards for excellence in communication and the Latin American Corporate Responsibility Award presented by the Social Ecumenical Forum, and to be nominated as a finalist for the Co-Responsible Award in Spain.”

Thanks to the participation of public-safety agencies and institutions from the region — including police officers, firefighters, public health service workers, government ministries and others — more than 5,750 children will become more familiar with public-safety agencies through playful games that turn them into active citizens at a young age and make them capable of collaborating and communicating quickly to ask for help in critical moments.

“Contributing to a safer society involves more than providing technological solutions to help public-safety agencies do their jobs better,” said Matthew Blakely, executive director of the Motorola Solutions Foundation. “It also entails providing the community with tools that make them better prepared for emergency situations, and that is precisely what Connected by Safety does. We are proud to support this initiative and to be able to strengthen this educational program with a regional impact year after year.”

The workshops began in Brazil in June and will continue in September in Colombia, Argentina, Peru and Bolivia and in Chile and Mexico in October. This program will run in 2018 based on a grant that was awarded in 2017.

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